Spring that year was a strange and solitary time. There were days when the only car that passed below his house was the mailman, weeks when he spoke or heard no word of human speech. Boyd did not come and he did not come and there was no letter, as if the border of trees he’d walked into had fallen closed behind him like a curtain that shrouded the mysteries of one world from the mysteries of another. (p. 38)
Maybe someone wrote it before Cormac McCarthy, and maybe McCarthy got it from someone else, but there it is: "Boyd did not come and he did not come…"
I remember the first time I read this doubled up action in Blood Meridian and all I could say was Wow. It doesn’t bother me to see it here in Gay’s novel; I would only hope that (once I finish this book and do some checking into William Gay’s bio) I find Gay to be an admitted fan of McCarthy. The writing here is exquisite and I’m enjoying both the story as the plots unravel and the characters develop depth as much as the lyrical flow of the writing style.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology